“Why, I guess it’s a nightmare to him,” said Jo.
“Well, you’ve got it in your power to spare him that, at any rate.”
Jean caught at her twin’s hand.
“Oh, Jo, let’s do it!” she begged. “It’s only silly pride if we don’t, as Helen says. And we’ll do our level best to give him a good time and look after him. It will be lovely for Billy, too—he’s always wanted a mate.”
“It would be altogether lovely,” said Jo,—“if only horrid old money didn’t come into it. But I agree with you—we’d be stupid not to take such a chance.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” said Helen. “Mother will feel simply years younger. Now look here, twinses: I’m to meet her in town this afternoon, so you had better write her a letter, and then she and I can fix everything up.”
“All right,” said Jo. “Dig out a dictionary, will you, Jean?—we mustn’t spoil our chances by putting in bad spelling!”
“If you spelt every other word wrong it wouldn’t worry Mother just now,” Helen said, laughing. “It’s mothering and a jolly home she wants for Rex, not higher flights of knowledge!”
“There are no higher flights about my spelling!” said Jo, with decision. “You ask Miss Allpress!”
Whereupon the twins politely hinted that solitude would be helpful to them, and applied themselves to composition; the result being a document over which Mrs. Forester smiled in a Melbourne tea-room that afternoon.